


in the bone

by ndnickerson



Series: Rain on a Tin Roof [13]
Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Family, Married Couple, Married Sex, Oral Sex, Past Relationship(s), Resolved Sexual Tension, Reunions, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2012-12-29
Packaged: 2017-11-22 21:12:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/614388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam invites her boyfriend over for dinner, on a day Nancy meets a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the bone

She's cold, and when she feels for him, beside her, he isn't there.

She keeps her eyes closed and draws in a long breath, and it trembles at the edges, her eyes flooding with warmth. Somehow it's worse to cry in the dark, in their bed, but she did this all the time, before. When the pills wore off and he wasn't around and Sam was screaming from the bassinet beside the bed.

Ned.

The fog clears and she relaxes so quickly that her collarbone brushes the mattress. Blindly she nuzzles into the pillow. Their bed smells of him, of them, faint and warm, and she pulls the blankets up until the darkness is even deeper.

He's usually holding her by now. He's physical when he sleeps. His palm over her stomach, his fingers barely brushing the curve of her breast, his fingertips tucked just inside the waistband of her shorts. His breath against her shoulder blades, his lips against the nape of her neck.

Sometimes it takes a great deal of effort to remember there was ever a time when he didn't sleep beside her. Sometimes she turns in her sleep and he slides his knee up between her thighs, and her heart aches in her chest, for love of him.

She sleeps and when she wakes again there are a pair of blue eyes staring into hers, five inches away, glazed and shining with tears.

"Jessie," Nancy exhales, and sits up. "Baby, what's wrong."

"Bad dream." Jessie's holding a stuffed yellow horse, tucked under one arm, as her toes find the cold thin ledge of the bedframe and she pushes herself up. A pair of lines furrow between her eyebrows as she slides her knees clumsily up onto the mattress. Ned has those same lines when he's frustrated, angry, tired.

Nancy reaches out and takes her daughter into her arms, and Jessie snuggles up against her, and Nancy can hear her breathe, the slow warmth of it, the catch of her tears.

"You're okay."

Jessie sniffs. "Where's Daddy?"

Nancy closes her eyes, the point of her chin brushing the crown of Jessie's head. "He had to go to work early today."

"Why?"

Nancy smiles. "Because he loves you."

"Is he going to come back and make pancakes?"

"Not this morning."

Jessie pauses, rubbing her face against Nancy's shirt. "Do I have two daddies?"

Nancy laughs and brushes Jessie's hair away from her cheeks. "No, baby. You have one daddy."

"But Sam has two."

Nancy wraps her arms around Jessie again. "Sam has two daddies because she had one father, and then I married Ned and he became Cole's daddy and your daddy. And he loves Sam so much that he became her daddy, too."

"Sam's other daddy isn't my daddy too?"

"No."

Jessie sniffs once, but the sound is faint this time. Her heartbeat was like a flutter under her ribs, but now it's slowing. "So he won't come make me pancakes?"

"No, baby. No. I'm sorry. But you can have... what can you have, Jessie."

"Scamble egg?"

"Yes, I can make you scrambled eggs, if you get ready to go to school."

"Mmm. 'n a minute."

Nancy laughs at her daughter, stretching her legs under the covers. She brushes her lips over Jessie's forehead, and her daughter giggles just louder than a breath.

"In a minute."

Sam's red hair is tied up with a pale yellow ribbon and she carries a brown leather messenger bag over one shoulder, and as Cole mumbles his goodbye and heads into the school an hour later, with his little sister's shoulder under his hand, Sam turns and smiles at her mother.

"Can I..."

"Is this going to involve seeing your boyfriend after school?"

"Just for a minute," Sam begs, pressing her hands together palm-to-palm. "Or he can come over... can he come over for dinner?"

"Do you trust Ned not to grill him within an inch of his life?"

Sam stretches her long legs in the floorboard, her ponytail brushing her shoulder blades. "Is that how Grandad was?"

Nancy laughs, remembering the first time her father had her invite Ned over for dinner. Remembering the awkward lunch when Frank had solemnly asked for her hand in marriage, and only Nancy had noticed the faint tremor in her father's right hand as he tried to keep it steady by his plate, the way Carson's laugh never quite reached his eyes at Frank's offhand remarks, the tense line of his shoulders under his shirt. The way he never quite met Frank's eyes.

The way he had always met Ned's eyes, never put up even a hint of protest when Nancy had begged him to go on vacation with Ned, go abroad with Ned, go up to Emerson to see Ned. How she, at sixteen, had known nothing more incredibly intoxicating than her boyfriend's kisses.

He had been hers and she his, and for the rest of their lives, there would be no one else.

Nancy shakes her head. "He knew better," she says lightly, and she only has to blink once before her eyes are clear again.

"So is that a yes?"

Nancy sighs. "Yes. Seven o'clock, but it's a school night, so he goes home after and you do your homework, okay?"

"Okay," Sam pouts, and Nancy can't keep herself from laughing. "What?"

"You sounded the exact same way when I told you that you'd have to keep going to school while we were on our honeymoon."

"Oh." Sam shoots a swift glance at her mother. "Your honeymoon?"

"Yeah. Don't think about it too hard."

Sam shivers. "I won't. Ick. Just don't talk about it over dinner, okay?"

"We'll try our best not to, okay?" Nancy pulls to a stop at the front of the high school, and when Sam's already halfway out, her shoes on the sidewalk, she smiles at her daughter. "Have a good day."

"I'll try." Sam slips her arm around her mother's shoulders for a brief hug. "Thanks for letting him come to dinner."

Nancy smiles. "I was sixteen once too."

Sam stops on the sidewalk, her hand resting against the door, her other hand on her hip. "Yeah, and you had a Mustang. Which you totally should have passed down to me."

"Hey, I didn't have it until I was eighteen."

"So I guess you think you have a few more years."

"We'll see."

Sam slams the door and saunters off, fully aware of the eyes on her, the gazes following her. She links her arm through that of the boy leaning against the front of the building, and Nancy can't watch for too long. Her heart is racing.

She wants to talk to Ned, but he swore he would call as soon as he could, and her phone is still silent.

She has been working on the story for almost a month now. All morning she works on it, cross-checking her sources, staring at her flow chart. The story is almost finished, almost, and working on this helps her forget her loneliness. She hates waking up alone. It reminds her too much of the way things were.

There was a time when he swore he would never leave her side, not again, and she knows he never will, that her fear is a phantom limb from another life, the memory of a mistake.

She doesn't want to leave for lunch, but he still hasn't called and she's sick of ordering out for deli sandwiches and salads. She crosses the street and the wind is dying down, and she tries to switch gears. Dinner for six. Sam's boyfriend.

Cole at ten years old looks so much like his father. He plays touch football in the backyard with his friends, and he and Ned built a treehouse overlooking the lake, and when he's Sam's age they'll have to keep an ankle monitor on him because he'll be a heartbreaker. Just like his father.

While she's waiting for her salad—this one with steak, just so she'll know she's not in the office—Nancy pulls out her notebook and flips to the last clean page, uncaps a pen and traces a triangle.

She's felt the eyes, the gaze on her since she walked in, but suddenly the hair on the back of her neck is prickling, and she has to force herself not to glance around. Ever since the paper published her picture, ever since she was sixteen years old, she has been watched.

But it's been different for the past two weeks, and she looks down at her phone, but it remains stubbornly silent.

Nancy's just finished mentally prepping her shopping list for tonight's dinner when a party of four passes by her table on the way out. Nancy glances up when one of them stops across from her, already arranging her face in a polite smile, expecting to see someone who knows her father or who follows her stories in the newspaper.

But the woman who meets Nancy's gaze is a stranger—and still Nancy feels a spark of recognition, like their gazes have met in a shopping line or in the newspaper's bullpen, something. The woman is tall, with dark hair, hair with a slightly warm auburn shimmer that Nancy immediately places as artificial. Her eyes are dark, warm, and frank. Nancy lets that polite smile fade.

It's that phantom tremble down her spine again.

"Nancy Nickerson?" The woman's voice is firm and polite, almost brisk, and Nancy nods immediately.

"It's a—pleasure to meet you."

\--

Ned calls when she's been back in the office ten minutes after lunch, and Nancy's still feeling like the earth isn't steady beneath her feet anymore. Like a long-dormant panic has somehow awakened and is trying to claw its way out of her again.

They got the contract. His company got the contract he's been working for.

She tries to swallow the panic, and she tells him that Sam's boyfriend will be over for dinner, that she'll try to get off work a little early just so she can make sure everything's in order. His voice is warm and while he's in a hurry, just the sound of it, the genuine affection in it, still sends a warmth straight down to her toes, even through that small thread of fear.

And she needs him. She needs him the way she needed him whenever she would speak to Frank, whenever she would have a bad day. When she wraps her arms around him, she's _home_ again, and that feeling has never, never faded, not even when things between them were so tentative and fragile.

But she doesn't have time to indulge herself. She rushes through the grocery store on the way home, and just before she reaches the checkout, the endcap display of red wine draws her back. At home she quickly browns the Italian sausage and stirs in the spaghetti sauce, then layers the noodles, ricotta mixed with spinach, parmesan, and Italian herbs, and the sauce in the pan, ending in a generous layer of parmesan and mozzarella cheese. She tears open the bag of romaine hearts and assembles the caesar dressing from scratch, shaves aged parmesan and makes herbed croutons, then splits open a large loaf of French bread to make generous slices of cheesy garlic bread.

"Cole, sweetheart, set the table?"

Cole's sitting at the table with his math book open and a pencil in his hand, Sam beside him. "I'll do it!" Sam says eagerly, and Cole begins to gather up his books and notebooks.

"Thanks, Sam. Cole, could you check on Jess for me? She's been quiet too long."

"Yeah," Cole mumbles, pushing his hair out of his face, and he's so very like Ned that Nancy's heart clenches for a minute. God, she misses him so much.

"And both of you get washed up for dinner, okay?"

"Yes, Mom," Cole says, but just before he leaves the kitchen, he says, "So are we gonna have an awesome dessert since Will's coming over?"

The expression on Sam's face is torn between exasperation and eagerness, and Nancy has to laugh. "We'll see. Go find Jess."

Nancy can tell when her husband's home; her every nerve feels alight when the garage door begins to growl to itself as it rises. Sam's ponytail swings as she turns to look at the door between the garage and the kitchen, and Cole and Jess run in from the den.

"Daddy!"

Ned laughs when he walks in, his briefcase in his hand, and he's immediately enveloped in hugs from his two younger children. Sam takes Ned's briefcase and gives him a wide grin.

"I _missed_ you, Daddy!" Jess whines, a small, adorable pout on her face as she crosses her arms, her voice accusatory.

"Can you look at my math homework, Dad?"

After Ned comforts Jess and agrees to look over Cole's homework, he straightens and looks at Sam. "So your young man is coming over tonight."

Sam nods twice, briskly. "Please, _please_ be nice to him?"

"When am I ever not nice?" Ned asks, and Sam casts one last pleading look over her shoulder before she takes Ned's briefcase to the home office.

And then Ned walks over to his wife, wraps his arms around her from behind, and Nancy closes her eyes, relaxing against him. "Hey sweetheart," he murmurs, kissing the side of her neck.

"I missed you," Nancy whispers, cupping her hand over his, and she puts down the spoon and turns in his arms. She has an apron tied over her work clothes, but she slips her arms around her husband's neck anyway, and they hold each other for a long moment.

"I missed you too, Nan."

Cole returns to the kitchen first, making a disgusted noise at seeing his parents entwined. "You guys have ten minutes to get the kissy stuff over with," he announces, opening the refrigerator.

Nancy looks up into her husband's eyes, holding his gaze for a moment before she lets him go. He returns a few minutes later in jeans and gestures for Nancy to let him take over, and she gives him a grateful smile as he finds the oven mitts to lift the lasagna out of the oven.

Sam is sixteen. When Nancy was her age, she was with Ned... but no matter how old Sam is, a part of Nancy still sees her daughter as a baby, and no guy she brings home will ever be good enough for her.

Over dinner Ned limits himself to a few questions, asking Will what his favorite subjects and sports are, and they bond over what teams have better playoff chances. Everyone tells Nancy the lasagna is the most delicious one they've ever tasted, and no one grumbles over the milk and refrigerated-dough peanut butter cup cookies Nancy serves for dessert.

Afterward, Cole wants Ned to look at his homework, and Jess wants Nancy to look at the drawings she did that day. From the corner of her eye, as Nancy listens to Jess, her words tripping over each other in her excitement, describe what she drew, she keeps track of Sam and Will. They speak in low tones, and Sam shrugs Will's hand away when he lets it linger on her arm or knee, casting a self-conscious half-glance in her mother's direction every time. Sam tucks a loose strand of red hair behind her ear and Will playfully grabs her ponytail and releases it, an easy grin on his face.

They spend a good ten minutes on the porch saying goodbye, but Nancy does her best not to notice, even though she waits until Sam's back inside to take Jess for her bath. Sam has a dreamy expression on her face when she sits down, her legs tucked up under her as she sits in her favorite recliner, opening her history book.

Nancy doesn't know what she would do without Ned here to help her; she can imagine all too well how tough it must be for Callie to raise her and Frank's daughter Emma on her own. After Ned looks over Cole's homework, he tucks Jess in and reads her a story, and Nancy loads the dishwasher, sighing when she realizes she forgot to line the lasagna pan in aluminum foil for easy clean-up. Sam wanders into the kitchen with that same dreamy look on her face and grabs one of the leftover cookies, then glances at the few dishes in the sink.

"Need some help?"

"Only if you're done with your history homework."

Sam shrugs, swallowing the last bite of cookie as she pulls on the rubber dishwashing gloves. Soon she'll be going off to college. From the other room Nancy hears her husband flip the television to the evening news, and she comes over and wraps an arm around her eldest daughter's shoulders, giving her a little hug.

"So that went well, I thought."

Sam nods, glancing over at her mother. "Maybe next time I could help make dinner? You know, show him I know a thing or two..."

"Find out what kind of dessert he likes," Nancy advises. "And maybe we'll _both_ get brownie points if it's chocolate, because Ned loves chocolate."

"Like I didn't know that," Sam laughs.

Then Cole comes downstairs, and by the time Nancy and Sam finish cleaning the kitchen, Ned and Cole are watching the sports recaps, and Ned's explaining the finer points of drafting to his son. Sam ruffles her little brother's hair and he bats her hand away, an utterly adorable scowl on his face, but then he says that Will seemed pretty cool.

Nancy has long known that Cole adores his older sister, and when Sam smiles at hearing Cole's approval, Cole sits back, a pleased expression on his face.

It feels so late when Cole finally hits the shower and goes to bed, and Sam says she just has a few changes to make on her paper before she prints it out and goes to bed. Nancy heads upstairs with a glass of wine and feels her stomach tremble a little when she opens her dresser drawer, then gets ready for bed.

Nancy has her powder-blue plush cotton robe wrapped around her, and she sits up in bed, waiting for her husband. He brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face, and comes to bed in his boxers, and she studies him in the low light. He isn't quite six months older than she, and while his body isn't quite as perfectly toned as it was when he was attending Emerson, he's still in great shape, and she still feels a delighted tingle down her spine when she sees him like this.

Even over the fear.

And when she turns to him, when she looks at her husband, oh, God, how she loves him. She couldn't ask for a better father for her children, for a better man to share her bed. Since they committed to each other, even before they were engaged, before their marriage, she has never doubted his fidelity, even while she believed she didn't deserve it.

"I'm so proud of you," she tells him, as he turns to set the alarm on his side of the bed.

"Thanks," he tells her, turning a genuine smile on her. "God, I'm just so glad we made it. Now we can relax for a while... and I can sleep beside my wife tonight, the _whole_ night."

Her lips curve up a little. "I missed you this morning," she murmurs.

"Oh? Tell me more." He's under the covers, and he props his head up, his dark eyes intent as he gazes at her.

And if she opens her robe, shows him what's beneath, that will cut their conversation short... and she can't. Not yet.

"I was at lunch today when a woman came over to me," Nancy says, and runs her hand through her hair, the taste of the wine still lingering on her tongue. "She asked my name, and then she said she knew you, a long time ago... she asked if we had kids, and that she was glad everything was going well for you."

"That's nice," Ned says pleasantly. "Wonder who..."

"Kate," Nancy says softly. "She had dark hair and dark eyes and said her name was Kate."

Ned's eyes are blank, and he shakes his head just a little. Nancy hates how intensely she's scrutinizing him, but she sees no guile in his expression when his eyes widen a little. He's finally placed the name and description. "God, I haven't thought about her in..."

Nancy's hand toys briefly with the sash of her robe, as he trails off. "Old girlfriend?"

Ned opens his mouth to respond, then pushes himself up to sitting, his gaze holding hers. "It was casual," he says softly. "Before you and I... before the night of the reunion."

"Oh."

Ned puts his hand over hers, then gently unties her robe. "Baby, are you okay?"

She nods. "So it was a long time ago," she says softly. "I guess it just... I don't know. Threw me for a loop." She gives him a crooked smile.

He shakes his head, then lets out a soft sigh of appreciation as he sees the black lace teddy under her robe. "I can't believe she came over and talked to you. After so damn long."

"If I had to guess... I think she kinda wanted you back. But when I told her about our kids... she was just happy for you."

"Good," Ned says solemnly, his voice low. "Because I'm exactly where I want to be, and I definitely don't need rescuing."

Nancy sits forward, letting him slip her robe off, and when she glances at the door he takes the hint, sliding out of bed so he can lock it. "But I thought you might like a reminder..."

"And on a school night, no less?" Ned's eyes are twinkling.

"Since you've been such a good boy."

"I've been a good _man_ , ma'am," Ned says sternly, as he moves back into bed with her. They hear the stairs creak and Sam's footsteps, the rush of water in the hall bath, and Nancy reaches for the remote, turning on the television just so it will disguise the sound of what they're doing. They make out until Sam goes to her bedroom and closes the door, Ned's hands caressing and fondling his wife through the thin black lace, and they're both panting a little when he pulls back to unfasten the teddy.

"Let's do that thing we used to do," she murmurs, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair.

"Which thing we used to do?"

She gives him a small smile. "Get a hotel room during our lunch break Friday," she says softly. "Just get away for a few hours, like we used to."

He looks down at her. The stretch marks from her pregnancies are almost faded now, but she still wishes her breasts were perkier, her stomach a little flatter. Ned looks at her with the same affection he always has, though, and she reaches for the waistband of his boxers before his gaze meets hers again.

"You know I'd love to, sweetheart," he tells her, pushing his underwear down.

"It just feels like it's been a while since we've had some time for just us..."

"I'm already sold on it," he says, moving over her. "Is this because you're feeling jealous about—her?"

"No," Nancy says, looking away. "Not—not really."

"Because you shouldn't." He cups her cheek, stroking his thumb against her, and Nancy knows she has fine lines at the corners of her eyes, laugh lines, and God, this man kneeling over her, this man she has loved for twenty years, he's changed too. But he has always looked at her like this.

"You are the only woman I have ever loved," he whispers, his gaze going from her lips to her eyes. "The only one, now and forever, baby."

"And you are the only man I have ever loved," she whispers in response, her heart beating a little faster. "The only one I ever will."

And when he slips his hand between her spread thighs, stroking and caressing her, she wraps herself around him, her face against his shoulder as she gasps and sobs in pleasure. He works three fingers up into the tight press of her sex, his thumb circling her clit, and she digs her nails into the firm muscle of his back, her hips quivering as she flushes in delight.

"Oh yes," she mumbles against him, rocking as her orgasm builds. "Oh yes oh _yes_ oh God, that is so good..."

They have been together so long that they no longer needs words; he can read the hitches in her breathing, she can read the furrow between his brows just as easily. But she wants to make him feel good, wants to reaffirm how good it feels when he makes love to her.

He fondles her until she comes, jerking against him, her head tipped back, and then he keeps touching her as his lips trace her throat, as he suckles each of her breasts in turn. She sprawls open under him, keeping her hands on him as he works his way down, and she has to muffle a sharp gasp against her palm when he first licks her clit.

While she may look in the mirror and long to see the eighteen-year-old girl with a bright face and firm skin she remembers once seeing there, now that she's in her thirties, her husband has learned how to give her the most intense orgasms she's ever experienced. When he's finished eating her out, they've kicked the covers off the bed and her fingers are twisted in his hair and she's panting, shuddering at the sheer pleasure—

And then, _then_ , he stretches out, moving a pillow beneath his hips to boost them for her, and pulls her on top of him, and she is so incredibly, gloriously slick. He sighs happily when she sinks onto him, her hips trembling even with their first thrust, and she groans when he rubs her clit again.

"It will be nice to get a room," he murmurs, his breath hitching with her every thrust. "So I can see if you even remember how to scream anymore."

"I'm counting on you to make me," she sighs, rocking her hips forward and back, and Ned strokes her thigh even as he keeps caressing her clit. "Oh holy _fuck_ that feels so good."

"It sure as hell does," he growls, and she kisses him, tasting her arousal on his lips, remembering when that had been a strange sensation.

He holds out until she kisses his adam's apple, the join of his neck and shoulder, his earlobe. "Oh, Ned, you feel so good inside me," she whispers, and he always has, from the first time they made love in his apartment, her wedding rings off and their bodies tangled together, frantic, making up for all the wasted time. "So good."

His muscles are tense, and he's rocking under her, desperate. "I love you."

"I love you too," she breathes, and then she sinks down to take his full length, intentionally tightening around him. "Mmmmm. Come inside me," she moans into his ear.

His groan vibrates against her neck as he obeys, his thumb still flicking her clit, and she moans softly as she melts against him, her inner flesh pulsing as he spends himself inside her. It's been years since they have tried to get pregnant, and it had never been hard; their lovemaking never became rote or felt like a chore. Especially when she's like this, sweaty and gloriously sated, collapsed and wrapped around her husband.

"Mmmm," Ned murmurs, stroking her hair. "God, you feel so good, baby."

It takes a long moment for Nancy to push herself up, and when she does, she kisses the point of her husband's jaw before slipping off him. She wipes her inner thighs and tosses him his boxers before pulling on her own underwear and an oversized t-shirt, and when she moves back into bed, grabbing the remote to turn their TV off, Ned immediately pulls her into his arms, kissing the crown of her head.

"Love you," he whispers.

She closes her eyes, nuzzling against his chest, feeling the reassuring vibration of his heart against her lips as she relaxes into their shared warmth. "Love you," she whispers, kissing the flesh over his heart.

"Now go to sleep. You're gonna need your rest for Friday."

"Speak for yourself," she chuckles, and he hugs her tighter.


End file.
